Hamilton College announces its spring film and lecture series, F.I.L.M (Forum for Images and Languages in Motion), scheduled on Sunday afternoons and Tuesday evenings. All events are free and open to the public.
"When you walk out of one of our events, you should know something--specifically something about media history--that you were not aware of when you walked in," says organizer and Hamilton Visiting Professor of Art History Scott MacDonald. "My hope is that our programs will bridge this gap, offering regular, entertaining education in film history and current practice to the campus and to central New York."
All Sunday series programs will be held in Kirner-Johnson Auditorium at 2 p.m. All Monday and Tuesday evening programs will be held in Kirner-Johnson auditorium at 7 p.m. and will be introduced and contextualized by MacDonald.
Listed below are events scheduled for February through April:
Sunday, Feb. 5, at 2 p.m. - An "Art in Cinema" Program
From 1946 until 1954 Frank Stauffacher's Art in Cinema Film Society energized the Bay Area cultural scene with screenings of a wide range of film events and helped to transform American film culture. Hamilton professor Scott MacDonald will present a selection of films that were of particular importance to the film society, including Maya Deren's A Study in Choreography for Camera (1945), Oskar Fischinger's Motion Painting No. 1(1947), Sidney Peterson's The Lead Shoes (1949), James Davis's Light Reflections (1949) and James Broughton's Mother's Day (1948).
Monday, Feb. 6 at 7 p.m. – Stan Brakhage, 1: Re-learning to See
When Stan Brakhage died in March 2003, a New York Times obituary included this quote, "In the entire history of the medium, when all the pop-culture interests have faded, a hundred years from now, [Brakhage] will be considered the preeminent artist of the 20th century." Brakhage's most important films include The Wonder Ring (1955), Window Water Baby Moving (1959), Prelude: Dog Star Man (1962) and Three Films: Bluewhite/Blood's Tone/Vein (1965).
Sunday, Feb. 12, at 2 p.m. - Tom Gunning lectures on Loie Fuller
Tom Gunning, Bergman Distinguished Service Professor in the Art History Department at the University of Chicago, will present a lecture on Loie Fuller, illustrated with examples of the films that documented her performances. Gunning is one of the world's leading scholars of film history and American studies; his writing has been formative in the study of the origins of cinema.
Tuesday, Feb. 14, at 7 p.m. - Special Valentine's Day double feature: The Freshman (1925) by Harold Lloyd and The Marriage Circle (1924) by Ernst Lubitsch
The Freshman was the most popular comedy of the '20s and for good reason; it's depiction of Harold Lamb, a college freshman who will do anything to be popular, remains both romantic and funny. Ernst Lubitsch's The Marriage Circle was a favorite of both Chaplin and Hitchcock.
Mitman, Professor of Science and Technology Studies at the University of Wisconsin, and author of Reel Nature: America's Romance with Wildlife on Film (Harvard), will explore "how scientific research, film, and cultural values came together in the meteoric rise to fame of two glamorous species—dolphins and elephants—and how that stardom has shaped international conservation politics in particular ways." Mitman's presentation includes excerpts from Revenge of the Creature from the Black Lagoon (with Flippy the dolphin) and The Family that Lived with Elephants
Monday, Feb. 20, at 7 p.m. - Homage to Canyon Cinema
In 1960 in Canyon, California, a tiny town over the hills from Berkeley, Bruce Baillie founded what he called Canyon Cinema. At first an anarchic neighborhood screening room, Canyon grew up to become the San Francisco Cinematheque and Canyon Cinema Distribution. During the '60s Canyon became a nexus for a "school" of West Coast filmmaking that was sensual, poetic, often funny and sometimes outrageous. We'll present a program of short films by filmmakers connected with Canyon Cinema, including Bruce Baillie's Tung (1966), Robert Nelson's Oh Dem Watermelons (1965), Bruce Baillie's Castro Street (1966), Bruce Conner's Marilyn Times Five (1969), Gunvor Nelson's Take Off (1972), Anne Severson's Near the Big Chakra (1972) and Chick Strand's Kirstallnacht (1978)
Sunday, Feb. 26, at 2 p.m. - Peter Hutton presents Landscapes of the Sea (in progress)
Peter Hutton has been making major contributions to American independent cinema for more than 30 years. His lovely, meditative depictions of landscape, cityscape, seascape and riverscape are distinctive and memorable, and they have been widely influential (Ken Burns, a one-time student of Hutton's, has called his mentor "a national treasure."). Hutton will present a new film, in progress as this is written, tentatively called Landscapes of the Sea; it was shot in Bangladesh, South Korea, and on a freighter crossing the Atlantic in winter. He is chair of the Film and Electronic Arts Department at Bard College.
Sunday, March 5, at 2 p.m. - (Science Auditorium) Darwin's Nightmare (2004) by Hubert Sauper
Some time in the 1960s, in the heart of Africa, a new animal was introduced into Lake Victoria as a scientific experiment. The Nile perch, a voracious predator, extinguished almost the entire stock of the native fish species. The white fillets of the Nile perch are today exported around the world. Hubert Sauper's award-winning documentary explores this process and its implications: "In Darwin's Nightmare I tried to transform the bizarre success story of a fish and the ephemeral boom around this 'fittest' animal into an ironic, frightening allegory for what is called the New World Order."
Sunday, April 2, at 2 p.m. - Jehane Noujaim presents The Control Room (2004)
Noujaim began shooting what was to become her feature documentary on Al Jazeera, the satellite news agency with 40 million viewers in the Arab world, during the two weeks leading up to the invasion of Iraq. This film is a remarkably intimate, revealing, often surprising window into Al Jazeera. As Noujaim cuts back and forth between American broadcasters and Al Jazeera, the film reveals the divergent ways the war was reported by Arabs and Westerners.
Sunday, April 9, at 2 p.m. - Chuck Workman presents Precious Images (1986) and other works
Academy-Award-winner (for Precious Images) and master of montage, Chuck Workman will present and discuss examples of his "recyclings" of iconic moments from commercial film. If you've watched the Academy Awards shows during the past decade or so, or if you've watched Turner Classic Movies on television, you've seen Workman's entertaining, evocative montages of various dimensions of film history. Workman has also worked in advertising and has made movie trailers (for Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Paris, Texas), documentaries (Superstar, on Andy Warhol; The Source, on the Beat Generation) and independent features.
Monday, April 10, at 7 p.m. - Stan Brakhage 2: light and Light
Much of Brakhage's later career was focused on his attempt to use the movie camera to imaginatively explore the perceptual experience of light and the ways in which cinematic perception can assist in accessing something of the spirit. The following Brakhage films will be presented: Mothlight (1963), The Text of Light (1974), The Dante Quartet (1987) and Commingled Containers (1997).
Tuesday, April 11, at 7 p.m. - Salaam Bombay (1988) by Mira Nair
Mira Nair's first narrative film details the lives of the children who live in the streets of Bombay. The main character is a runner for a tea shop in a neighborhood replete with prostitution and drug trade. He must save 500 rupees before he returns to his village. All the scenes were shot on location. Also, most of the actors were street urchins playing themselves. Salaam Bombay earned Nair Best New Director at Cannes and an academy award nomination for Best Foreign Film.
Sunday, April 16, at 2 p.m. - Mira Nair presents Monsoon Wedding (1991)
World-class director Mira Nair (Mississippi Masala, Salaam Bombay, Vanity Fair) will visit campus, as the 2005-2006 Tolles lecturer. In Monsoon Wedding, the extended Verma family travels from around the world to reunite in New Delhi for a last-minute arranged marriage. The film is a love song to the city of Delhi and a portrait of modern, cosmopolitan India. Nair will answer questions after the screening.
Sunday, April 16 at 7 p.m. - "Between Two Worlds: An Evening with Mira Nair," Tolles Lecture NOTE: THE LOCATION FOR THIS EVENT IS WELLIN HALL
Sunday, April 23, at 2 p.m. - Shiho Kano presents recent film and video
Young Japanese independent film and video artist Shiho Kano will present a program of her short films and videos, including The Rocking Chair (2000), Incense (2002) and Rose-Colored Flower (2002).
Sunday, April 30, at 2 p.m. Shirin Neshat presents Passage (2001), and other films
Shirin Neshat has been living in the United States since the Iranian revolution of 1979. Often working with a community of Iranian artists living in New York City, Neshat has dramatized her own experiences as an Iranian woman living in the West and her evolving consideration of her heritage in a series of two-screen gallery installations, and in a series of short films, including Passage, made as a collaboration with Philip Glass. Her recent films are adaptations of stories in Shahrnush Parsipur's Women Without Men (1998); they are the components of what will be her first feature film.
MacDonald, F.I.L.M.'s organizer, programmed film series for 20 years in the '80s and '90s in Utica. He taught at Utica College for many years and has been a visiting professor of film at Bard College and the University of Arizona. He has written many books and essays related to film including his newly released A Critical Cinema 5.
For additional information or schedules, please call 859-4186 or e-mail smacdona@hamilton.edu.
